skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> "we were told there was money :("

People invest in services like Twitter knowing that there is a chance that they might not be monetizable, but believing that if they turn out to be, then the payoff will be enormous. So the expectation value of the return is still high.

Let's say I give you a box and tell you that inside is a social media company. You know that the achievable revenue per user could be anywhere from, what, a penny a month to a dollar a month -- two orders of magnitude of variability. You know that the achievable audience could be anywhere from, say, 10 thousand users to 1 billion users -- five orders of magnitude.

So if you want to determine how much you would pay for the contents of the box, you should try to learn about the potential audience rather than the potential revenue per user, because the former completely dominates the latter in the expected value computation.

Put another way -- how much would you pay to flip a coin where heads you get a billion dollars, and tails you get nothing? If you're allowed to purchase more than one coin flip, and the coin flips aren't too correlated, and you have access to efficient capital markets, probably close to half a billion dollars, am I right? :)
Programming Google Glass to play blackjack (basic strategy or a card-counting system) seems like a much more tractable problem. Watch the table, count the cards and recommend the optimal play.

I believe these sorts of wearable computing devices are already banned in most casinos.
You're confusing design with visual appeal. Steve Jobs loved to rant about design and longetivity, but Apple laptops only seem to excel on visual appeal (and this is a recent phenomenon - just look at the first PowerBook G4s). Design has to be functional, and this is where Apple always makes sacrifices.

Bringing chiclet-style keyboards back into vogue (to the point where even Lenovo now puts them on Thinkpads) shows a complete disregard for the functionality of the laptop as a computer. Try comparing the new apple-style chiclet keys, to "skateboard-ramp" shaped keys (an "innovation" introduced by IBM to save costs), to the spherical shaped keys (http://www.daskeyboard.com/blog/?page_id=1458#shapes) of high-end keyboards from the 1980s and you will see how far computer keyboards have actually degenerated. This isn't just my opinion - Kathleen Potosnak's review of literature (appears as chapter 21 in Helander's Handbook of Human-Computer Interaction) shows that shaped keys are better for typing.

There's a lot to be said about 3-button mice as well. One thing I do like about Macs is the touchpad on the newest ones (it took Apple a long time to make them really useful, though). Again, this is a sacrifice in terms of functionality. You can do things like https://github.com/vsedach/mouse-copy with the Thinkpad touchpoint and even the trackpad, but it's not convenient with most other trackpads (especially ones like the Mac's that don't have separate keys).

In terms of longetivity and visual design, I'm typing this on a 2004 Thinkpad T43. Nothing on this machine is broken, and despite 8 years of almost continuous use, even the keyboard labels only have a few nicks. This laptop looks as new or as old as the early 90s 386 Thinkpad we have at the hackerspace or the X230 my friend bought a few months ago. It wasn't until the PowerBook that Apple hit on a design with any sort of longetivity. Besides Apple and IBM/Lenovo, there's no one making laptops with a lasting design across many product generations.
It's good, but I'd say it's short of perfect due to the similarity of the "1" [one] and "l" [lower-case ell]. Inconsolata-g fixed this, but in a strange way (taking the lower serif off the "1" [one]).
http://occidentalascent.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/800px-19...
It's a historical event that affected millions and spawned research in at least 4 distinct fields. The wiki article cites several scholarly journals on top of BBC, Wired, Reuters, NPR and The Times. How much more notable could you want?
What features? The difference between MVC and Web API, to those using it, is that Web API uses restful routing and MVC does not. That is all.
I've written a script that extracts HN, which anyone is welcome to use. I use it for the Hacker News iPhone app:

http://api.thequeue.org/hn/frontpage.xml

http://api.thequeue.org/hn/new.xml

http://api.thequeue.org/hn/best.xml
I've written something similar for my Hacker News iPhone app:

http://api.thequeue.org/hn/frontpage.xml
http://api.thequeue.org/hn/new.xml
http://api.thequeue.org/hn/best.xml
Remix Culture and Tent
Yeah - for every 50-100 image views someone would visit my site.
Interesting, if that is in fact related to this incident it suggests that they got a copy of the Game Master(GM) private key, they are activating GM only 'features' of the game. In this case the 'kill all' aura, another feature is to imbue your weapons/armor with arbitrary stats. Saw a character doing that in 2008 or so.

No doubt this is related to this problem :http://kotaku.com/5933454/blizzard-network-breached-change-y...
That's how the story goes, anyway.
Wow, Adobe. An open-sourced font. I cannot believe in such a miracle. I am truly amazed. One of the main proprietary capitalist freak companies decided to go opensource on what? - on fonts - one of the most closed and commercialized areas. Somebody has triggered some magic switch that turns the world into a slightly better place.

The font is not that good though. In Windows it is rendered too wide. Does not seem to be able to replace my current fav Segoe UI Mono that I find more readable.

But now it is a completely different story: we have the source codes! Let's go edit some fonts the way we like!
Sure, if you believe there are network effects to geography, then you can predict that there would be a Silicon Valley somewhere in the world.

But why did it end up being in Northern California? Do you think that was pure accident? Could it have as easily been Tokyo? Frankfurt? Tehran? Oxford?
The Clinton administrations anti-trust judgment against Microsoft burst the internet bubble and sent our economy into a recession, the effects of which we are still feeling.

It also shackled Microsoft for 10 years as part of the judgment, so they have been unable to effectively compete with Google and Apple. This year, that 10 year judgment agreement ended, so expect to see more from Micrsoft.
Thinkpads are the only other computers I'll willingly use besides a Mac. I think they're the only other computer that actually feels like it's purposefully designed instead of just being a forgettable, reactionary me-too from terrible OEMs that offer zero real innovation.
PostgreSQL array field with Django
If the iPad mini rumors end up being true, I'll sell my Nexus 7 for the iPad mini. I've had a terrible experience with both the hardware and tablet versions of Android apps.

I'd be happy to get $100 out of my Nexus 7 that's how unhappy I've been.
Mucking with console/IDE fonts is the ultimate waste of time. Please stop doing it. It won't enhance your productivity. You have been warned.
Blizzard does use client side SSH certificates according to a dev at BlizCon 2 I think. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd guess that someone laid off in [1] took some of the family jewels with them which enabled [2] and ultimately this as well.

[1] http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/02/29/blizzard-announces-l...

[2] http://kotaku.com/5933454/blizzard-network-breached-change-y...
I don't have a Raspberry Pi to test it. But I think ECL may fit better because of its small footprint: http://ecls.sourceforge.net
Aesthetics: the creation and appreciation of beauty

In my opinion there is nothing more beautiful on a laptop than the thinkpads hardened steel hinges.
The one place things have gone downhill is screens. Thankfully you can still get matte screens rather than ones that double as mirrors. But Lenovo has gone 16:9 losing lots of vertical pixels - note how workflow is vertical (coding, documents) so this is a serious productivity killer. They also use large bezels meaning the laptops are larger than they need to be. And they used to be IPS giving excellent visual quality - that is pretty much extinct too.
How the mobile industry can support 1,000x growth in broadband traffic
Needless to say, this is an awful idea for anything besides a small personal project. PhantomJS or no, it's easy to detect this behavior, and also easy to understand why Twitter would be against it.
I'd guess that's because unless you are old enough your first computer could be an Apple II, an Atari, a Commodore, a Sinclair or Beeb, chances are your first computer was not really that memorable ;-)
I would hardly call that excessive profanity. In a 2000+ word article there are what, 10 instances of 'profanity'?

Honestly I think it speaks more to your maturity that you would find that so bothering that it could detract from the content of the article.
OK, you win. No one knows anything about anything and we should all stop talking, and we should all go embark on first principles research about everything and avoid taking lazy shortcuts like respecting anyone's expertise.

Good luck proving that your breakfast isn't poisonous before you eat it tomorrow. I hope you don't starve to death first.
Yes: Apple and Microsoft are different companies.
I would identify a few key users who have written posts about 'life organizing' or similar topics, really focus on the people that would be excited to use your product. Reach out to them, get their feedback, ask what current tools they use & what sites they visit any meetups/conferences to note?

Treat them as early adopters & value their insight.

If you're having trouble at identifying this kind of person you need to hone in on your ideal target customer, learn the keywords needed to find this type of person.

This will also help when you come to do a PPC campaign.
That they had to catch up is the real problem. They willfully stagnated for years.
An interesting lesson about addressing target groups, by Spar.
You can still get IPS panels, you've just got to pay the extra $50 to get the "enhanced" screen (and they're not available on all models).

I'm with you about being less than thrilled with the transition to 16:9 displays, though.
Another happy ThinkPad user here :)

I agree with all your points. The bricks are pretty
much universally interchangeable, except for W models (powerful workstation series, they have a large heavy brick with a higher current rating, which you cannot use with other series).

Repair manuals are fantastic. Two weeks ago the fan in my mother's T500 has become noisy. The laptop had been running non-stop for 3 years and the fan needed more lubrication. Using a repair manual that I downloaded from lenovo.com, I could do this in an afternoon, having had no prior experience of opening up (let alone fixing) a laptop of any kind (although I do have an experience of building my own desktops).

The knob and the thinklight are the best things since sliced bread.

BTW, you can turn off the trackpad completely in the BIOS setup utility. That's what I did on my X220 :)
For me myself it is often very motivating (sometimes demotivating) if somebody comes up and implements the same thing I want to do - but they accomplish 10x faster performance (even better if it is written in a cleaner style). The author seems also to rather enjoy those challenges ;)

In my interpretation the question "Faster than C?" is relevant because it is very easy to think that certain problems (like parsing binary data) are just not a good fit for language Y and thus the performance can't be good. Even if C performance is not attainable sometimes one cat get closer than one would think.

My last question is regarding his optmization example.I don't program javascript and thus have difficulties understanding how the optimized variant could every be faster than the original one. String concatenation and evaluation should not be faster (from my laymans perspective) than setting an indexed value to an array? (Ok actually it probably is not an array but a hash map, but are those so inefficient in java script? Or is it rather behaving like a sorted list where every value is inserted via binarcy search?).I would be very happy to get some insight.
I use a pseudonym as the domain with my name was unavailable. If my real name was indeed available, I would use domain with real name.
It's definitely a problem I see with startup equity, particularly the way options are often given. X% of nothing is still nothing and for most startups I can easily work out the very low likelihood of ever seeing cash out of the options they offer.

Many option plans also seem to have clauses where you can't keep them if you leave the company, making them all but worthless except for companies that exit quickly. As a result I'd almost only ever accept real equity that vests in some amount after 1 year or I don't see how I'm really getting anything at all.

The way I'd like to see it positioned is, you give me a sensible stake in the value we're building in trade for a reasonable expectation (1-2 years) of how much of my time you need to build some value. Otherwise just pay me the cash value you think the equity is worth and I can invest it in something real. I'm not going to be remotely motivated by you just handing me a lottery ticket.
The watermarks was only added, if you used the builtin screenshot-feature of WoW, and only if you didn't had it on quality-level 10 (max). So it won't work with videos and I guess that the hackers haven't used the builtin screenshot-feature, if they have released pictures.
Yes, they may have already done so. Recent reports show Android with 48% of market share WITHOUT counting Nexus 7 or Kindle Fire HD/Nook Tablet HD sales. I'd say those will easily cover the missing 2%.
You can always contact me (@jongalloway or jon.galloway at microsoft.com) with site suggestions. The more official way is to use the Site Feedback link in the site footer. We have weekly meetings with the site dev team, community folks (Scott Hanselman and me) and Scott Hunter (ASP.NET team head PM) and we give high priority to community feedback.

I do know that the Azure site team's looking at expanding community content. They've contacted me to ask about how we handle the community info on the site home page. In case you're interested, here's the overview: http://weblogs.asp.net/jgalloway/archive/2011/06/22/the-asp-...
++++1. Exactly my sentiments (also 1st gen US citizen here).

ghostoffuture, thank you for a most insightful comment.
Let's summarize: Apple, a hardware manufacturer, had only Apple products in their store. Microsoft, a software company, had hardware from many manufacturers, which is apparently confusing to Apple customers. Oh, and Microsoft's store was smaller.
>Now, I'm not from Europe, but I get the impression talking with some people I know from there (who may just be biased or romanticizing) that this sort of insanity simply doesn't play as well in that market: that people think through their monetary decisions a little longer, and are less likely to be tricked.

I am from Europe and I have no idea.

>Meanwhile, people in Europe really do seem to care more about information retention issues, and have passed numerous laws (sometimes ones that people consider quite over-the-top) that indicate a mindset in opposition to this "share everything about you as fast as possible so it can be monetized" concept.

Ok, valid point.

>So, if you are wording your statement or in any way reacting to this premise from a "how dare you insult other countries like that" mentality.

It was more a statement of sincere disbelief. We have quite a lot of IT companies in my country, including social networks (that obviously did not go global).

>what about these other countries makes them better than us and less likely to waste their time building these things?

If I understood the situation correctly, the builders cashed out quite nicely.
The Most Common Vulnerabilities Found By Penetration Tests
This is really nice. It would have been even cooler if it was running on the HDMI attached monitor, and then massively cooler if you could write list primitives that would let you draw on the screen, then you create an entire environment written in lisp (or smalltalk, or forth).

If you are reading this and you work for Broadcom of have some sway there, why not encourage them to make that possible by freeing the GPU from its proprietary bindings.
If you're making MBP vs. ThinkPad comparison, the screen is a complete game-changer. The MBP screen is in an entirely different league.
I've tried proportional fonts and gave up as the programming languages tend to emphasize punctuation and put crucial meaning in it, but in proportional fonts the punctuation is a second-class citizen, and this is reasonable for natural languages, but is not good for programming languages.
If you place 1800 images on a page, you'll save enough bandwidth to now have 1801.
Hotclicks
Did it lead to any scientific, technical, or artisitic accomplishments that you validated afterwars while sober? That is, did you understand anything while high, or did you have a dreamlike feeling of understanding?
October is Energy Action Month
There are many servers in eve. Each time you go through a jump gate you are usually hopping to a new server.
Yeah but not everyone gets to experience that, I've tried to play Eve a couple of times and even though I joined a corp I found it hard to submerse myself and play at that level.
I would imagine the reason for the difference in purchasing would be Apple's consistent pricing strategy. The price of an Apple product seems to be set no matter where you get it from, whereas people will bargain hunt for a Windows machine.
Escaping The Walled Garden of Enterprise Analytics Using R and Python
A 1982 Commodore 64 web server, 64k RAM, 1 MHz CPU, running Contiki
I suspect you are both correct and incorrect.

A more interesting question to ask is this, "Will I ever be able to write a sophisticated application for Android tablet that runs unchanged on more devices than I can for the iPad?"

The implication of that question is the 'friction' of delivering applications on Android, its very high given the diversity. The current best shot at answering 'yes' here is for the Kindle Fire and that says volumes.
"Yet I still wind up at Google around 20% of the time when I'm searching for terms with many matches"

I'm the same, and, unfortunately, even more often when searching for terms with very few matches. Google actually finds the relevant things.
i had to add some ram to my t400, it wasnt difficult but i was surprised that it lives under the touchpad and requires more disassembly than say, just popping off a panel on the bottom side. it's been my workhorse with an x-25m ssd for over 4 years. only complaint is with extended 9-cell battery it's def a bulky thing. i've also had some issues using the reduced-size awkwardly-offset up/down/left/right keys - at least 3 times a day i will hit page-left or page-right by accident, causing tab switching. http://www.notebookcheck.net/typo3temp/pics/e82f8ee408.jpg

a huge win in all situations is having the cooling vents on the sides rather than bottom and keyboard drain/spill tray.
I write code primarily to analyze data from my experiments, and I do it primarily in Python. I have been told (and have read) repeatedly, that optimizing is to be done right at the end and only to optimize the inner most loop etc.

From my reading, this guy is advocating the exact opposte: optimize as you code. It sounds sensible, but what to other people who have to optimize for a living have to say?
I wonder what are the policies for cell phones?
I'm not actually sure I agree with her hypothesis. I remember devices because they were important to me, not because I was the only cool kid on the block with a C64.

If anything, it seems that devices are getting _more_ important and more personal. I'd rather get my wallet stolen than my phone.
I love the "eval is awesome" section.

It's taken my years of study, but I finally "get" Lisp. Let me summarize pg's On Lisp:

"Lisp is a language for writing programs fast"

1) Write a function

2) Write a function that does something similar to #1

3) Begin to write a function that does something similar to #1 and #2

4) Abstract out the commonalities between #1 through #3

5) Encounter all kinds of new use cases for your abstraction in #4

6) Wait for #5 to become unwieldy

7) Abstract #4 even further, until you have something that resembles an interpreter

8) Wait for #7 to become a performance bottleneck

9) Write a compiler that takes inputs to #7 and turns them into #1 through #5

"Lisp is a language for writing fast programs"
You're missing the forest for the trees. There's much healthier competition in the OS market today, and it's easy for consumers to find alternatives to the market leader.
A macintosh that could dual boot into windows 95. High tech.
I think it was seriously discussed, but never actually executed.
As it turns out there are a couple of guys publishing videos youtube of their, POV as the attacker/killer, so if the dot-pattern thing isn't a hoax then those guys are screwed...
but from what I read it sounds like it's a bunch of guys who are annoyed that the hack exists and so they're abusing it until Blizzard fixes it.
Seems to be the perfect font for use without antialiasing. Reminds me of the text mode on the old x86s.
What was the bug? I'd like to make sure it's listed on https://aspnetwebstack.codeplex.com/workitem/list/basic if it's not there already.
>The excessive use of "fuck" and "shit" throughout the entire article really takes away from its message.

Really? I haven't even noticed it. Only remember reading a great js performance article. Maybe "shit" is in the eye of the beholder?

>It just seems very immature.

Zzzzzz.
Be “Furnace Aware and Prepared”
I don't think he means in terms of implementation detail like "how many machines are running the world": the idea is that there is only a single shard (to use UO terminology; I believe WoW calls these "realms"), which means that everyone is playing together in a single massive alternate universe.
It's all fun and games until you find yourself buying this: http://www.amazon.com/Mad-Catz-R-A-T-7-Gaming-Mouse/dp/B003C...
>From my reading, this guy is advocating the exact opposte: optimize as you code.

Huh? He had ALREADY written his library before he started optimizing.

He even says that the profiler didn't show much, because he had all parsing code inside one big function.
All I know is that after having the Nexus 7, the iPad (3, which I also have) feels like a burden to use. Slower, double the weight, not nearly as portable and iOS feels byzantine next to Jelly Bean. My friends universally share my sentiments.

Apple market share will fall over time to 20%-30%. You can't cater to all users with a single product, and they don't bring enough innovation to make their product a must-have.
Can someone explain what EVE is? And explain it like I don't know anything about it (and I don't). Wikipedia, etc. don't cut it and I still don't understand what EVE is and why people like it.

Thanks a lot!
Wow, I missed that first time around. Neat.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4505584
> And that's just the folks who haven't given up entirely and instead spend their days with a list in Excel.

Some folks are more creative than that. Crappy UI? No problem, we have markers:
http://javlaskitsystem.se/2012/02/whats-the-waiter-doing-wit...
Take a look at Authy for a reasonably easy way to add two-factor auth to your normal SSH login. It's intended for website authentication, but there is a Github project for adding it to sshd.

https://www.authy.com/

https://github.com/authy/authy-ssh